No. 99: Tortilla Andorra at Anepalco's

• No, I'm talking about omelets made using what Julia Child's <i>Mastering the Art of French Cooking</i> calls "professional techniques" -- see http://www.randomhouse.com/knopf/authors/child/recipe.html . They also drool like a St. Bernard, in a manner that lawyers for non-French restaurants in this country fear. I've had this style over much of France, in better restaurants elsewhere in Western Europe, and in Montreal. I used to get fine omelets at Bette's Oceanview Diner in Berkeley (which overstuffed them, however) but hardly anywhere else in the U. S.

• Talk about a group of guys with nothing else to do...

• You're talking about omelettes <i>à la Mère Poulard</i> when you talk about 20-25 seconds over very high heat, but those are an oft-copied dish from a tourist trap of a restaurant near <i>le Mont-St.-Michel</i> and are not typical of most French omelettes... though you are right that French omelettes are never thin and crispy—though, to be fair, the picture doesn't look thin and crispy either. I happen to love my omelettes <i>baveuses</i>—"drooling" with undercooked egg. It takes a lot of convincing to get non-French restaurateurs to make it for me.

• You're giving us Arellano skeptics a bad name. Or maybe that's the point?

• "The tortilla is cooked thin and crispy, like the best omelets, but these eggs are fluffier, creamier." The tortillas at Anepalco's may be good (and I'm glad to hear they're creamy), but great French-style omelets are not thin and crispy. They're soft and creamy -- the product of 20-25 wild-shaking seconds over very high heat -- and usually twice-folded to the thickness of three of those skinny tortillas plus any (modest amount of) filling. The Italian frittata is similar to the tortilla, but it's much thicker and is cooked slowly over an ultra-low flame for 10-15 minutes. All can be delicious, properly done, but in my experience, just under 100% of the omelets served in America restaurants are disgusting -- overbeaten, overcooked, dry as rooster spit, and folded around clunky, undercooked fillings. I gave up hope long ago, which is why I've made French-style omelets at home several times a week for the entire third millennium.

• go back to mexico

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